...and I say that despite knowing that someone who as at the time Foreign Secretary ditched their security to go to a wild party hosted by a former KGB officer...

I'd expect that the risk register for a train station, and the risk register for an MPs office, would suggest that's the right balance.

Giving the security services a veto over who gets elected might have some drawbacks in the longer term of course...

Well, some of what he writes is plausible. 😁

Actually that's not true - I did in 1997 and in 2010. The first I was a student and the second I was in a deep state of political trauma on account of having George Galloway represent me in parliament, so I think I can forgive myself the lapse.

This started a mental train of thought about the electoral dynamics between parties and individual candidates and ended up with me realising that I am not sure I have ever voted in a general for a candidate who then won.

So you can't blame me, ok?

...but there's a band through which the economic and the political are sides of a coin. What everyone has known since Mogadishu is that the US's weakness is not military capability but resolve. Currently you'd also have to add a total strategic collapse at the top of the chain of command.

I'd found myself wondering if Iran's approach to the Strait of Hormuz is an unusual exception this rule. It's rapidly created a (geo + domestic) political risk rather than directly reducing the logistical capacity of the US to wage war...

It’s so hard to fight the urge to anthropomorphise this thing. Even when it is ‘admitting fault’ it’s still just an algo. There is no ‘me’ you’re calling out…but oh my does it feel like there is.

"Standards in public life..."

<tumbleweed>

"...and 80s TV like Knight Rider and the A-Team, Stanley"

Addictive social media is in the dock. Will AI be next? The recent Meta ruling could be far reaching

Addictive social media won’t be nuthin’ on addictive AI. Great piece by Jamie Bartlett: jamiejbartlett.substack.com/p/addictive-...

The main messages of a physics undergrad course are that the universe doesn’t work the way you think it does, and that what you know is largely outclassed and outgunned by what you don’t know. Easy to be upset and offended if you weren’t aware!

So, yes, it's age. Get's to the point where you hesitate to watch some films again because you don't want the vague memory of awe to be overwritten.

You can't watch the same film twice. The film may stay the same, but you don't.

Dooooes anyone have a dart pistol I can borrow?

Your Duty Is Clear (The Simpsons) YouTube video by ThingsICantFindOtherwise

Will be interesting to see what factors become decisive as we inexorably move to machine-on-machine combat...

..and also just to note that the The Simpsons is disturbing on a number of levels.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkg3...

(that was a joke, for avoidance of doubt. Not a good one but...)

This wouldn't be so much of a problem if Boomers voted as often as Gen Z.

So, I'm wondering if the response is a) regulate social media (hard) or b) seed voter disengagement content at them (easy). I'm just saying...

This is bizarrely close to my own position, and I think I got there some time in my 30s.

A post says "there's AI in denial of service" only the i and the a are reversed in the spelling as a joke. Someone points out that mistake. The original poster replies saying the person is in 'denial' again with the i and a switched around, and then points out that the person who replied had used its without the apostrophe.

Brazenly Unprincipled Retreat Rationalized In Toothless Oratory

by no means the main take to be had here (indeed takes 1 to 25 should be along the lines of "fucking hell Keir"), but worth noting just how quickly moral rot can spread - all of this obviously happened because Trump won and the government needed someone morally rotten to step in to help them

Does that mean, long term, we just end up with terrible law, or will people find a another way to high quality outcomes? Looks like we're set to find out....

There's no doubt there will be disruption. Something 80% as good but 5% of the cost - that also kills your talent pipeline - is irresistible, an inherent short-term degradation and a long term catastrophe.

Amateurs something something generals logistics.

Very important for something. I think it was either the proper seasoning of the Captain's salmon, or scurvy, not sure.

Plus quite a long way to travel as well...

Canned goods and ammunition..?

Catnip for policy geeks. Also, just a lovely and well-written piece.

I like to imagine this as a voucher you cut out from The Sun.